The governmental arrangements in America were inherently educational; in Prussia they were the reverse, save when, with revolutionary fury, the people rose to seek their destruction or reform. In Prussia, says Horace Mann, “the subject has no officers to choose, no inquiry into the character or eligibility of candidates to make, no vote to give. He has no laws to enact or abolish. He has no questions about peace or war, finance, taxes, tariffs, post office, or internal improvements to decide or discuss. He is not asked where a road shall be laid, or how a bridge shall be built, although in the one case he has to perform the labor and in the other to supply the materials.... The tax gatherer tells him how much he is to pay, the ecclesiastical authority plans a church which he must build; and his spiritual guide, who has been set over him by another, prepares a creed and a confession of faith all ready for his signature. He is directed alike how he must obey his King and worship his God.” The schools of Prussia inculcated religion and morality as sedulously as they taught geography, singing, and writing, the methods used being highly praised by American pedagogical experts. This universal insistence on the ethical content of life could not fail to produce results more or less in harmony with the aims of great ethical philosophers, like Kant of Königsberg, a teacher of the learned whose “categorical imperative,” popularized in that epoch, has not yet gone into the philosophical discard. The average German immigrants of the 1840’s knew little of Kant or the Kantian school of ethics. But of honesty, truthfulness, and fidelity to the plighted word they knew much, because those were practical virtues with which in school if not at home all were indoctrinated. Thrift and industry were additional but fundamental virtues which were widely diffused. It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright. The reason why in America a German’s note was more often worth face value than that of some other classes was because the German usually labored unceasingly and saved what he earned, thus enabling him to meet his obligation.[43]